Markets trade lower tracking weakness in Asian counters

Indian equity benchmarks, after a flat start, slipped into negative territory and are trading with a cut of around half a percent in early deals tracking weakness in Asian counters. Most of the Asian markets are trading in the red at this point of time as traders braced for a highly-anticipated European Central Bank meeting. Though, the US markets made a modest recovery overnight and S&P 500 managed to reach a new record closing high. However, the buying interest was somewhat subdued after ADP report showed that the pace of private sector job growth slowed more than expected.

Back home, losses remained capped up-to certain extent on report that foreign institutional investors (FIIs) bought shares worth a net Rs 192.56 crore on June 4, 2014, as per provisional data from the stock exchanges. Meanwhile, Prime Minister, Narendra Modi met the Secretaries of all government departments to outline his agenda of governance and in a positive step he said that the Government’s priority is to revamp the economy and asked the officials to prepare presentations on the contributions their Ministries can make to the revival. In a separate development, industry body Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has called for a comprehensive review of the new Companies Act 2013 and the rules issued there under.

On the sectoral front, metal, power and healthcare witnessed the maximum gain in trade, while banking, oil and gas and fast moving consumer goods remained the top losers on the BSE sectoral space. The broader indices, however, were outperforming benchmarks, while the market breadth on the BSE was positive; there were 1,249 shares on the gaining side against 702 shares on the losing side while 74 shares remain unchanged.

The BSE Sensex opened at 24828.38; about 23 points higher compared to its previous closing of 24805.83, and has touched a high and a low of 24831.79 and 24644.88 respectively. The index is currently trading at 24708.02, down by 97.81 points or 0.39%. There were 13 stocks advancing against 17 declines on the index.

The overall market breadth has made a strong start with 61.68% stocks advancing against 34.67% declines. However, the broader indices were outperforming benchmarks; the BSE Mid cap and Small cap indices up by 0.26% and 0.13% respectively. 

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, Metal up by 1.40%, Power up by 0.67%, Healthcare up by 0.33%, Consumer Durables up by 0.26% and Infrastructure up by 0.25% while, Bankex down by 0.87%, Oil and Gas down by 0.57%, FMCG down by 0.35%, Auto down by 0.33% and Realty down by 0.31% were the top losers on the sectoral index.

The top gainers on the Sensex were SSLT up by 3.90%, Hindalco up by 2.68%, HUL up by 1.37%, Wipro up by 1.29% and Maruti Suzuki up by 1.02%. On the flip side, ICICI Bank was down by 1.79%, ONGC was down by 1.49%, HDFC Bank was down by 1.41%, Tata Power was down by 1.09% and ITC was down by 1.04% were the top losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, in order to meet the rising domestic coal requirements, Coal India has planned to form a panel of consultants which would help it in acquiring, developing and operating coal mines overseas.

Coal India is eyeing coal assets abroad to meet the domestic demand. Earlier, Coal Ministry had stated that acquisition of coal mines overseas should be done in an aggressive manner to meet India’s rising energy requirements. Taking forward its plans to acquire overseas mines, CIL had recently invited bids for the third phase of drilling in the African nation. It had earlier invited bids from bankers and interested parties for acquiring assets abroad.

India, despite being world’s third-largest producer of coal and fifth largest in terms of reserves, has failed to keep pace with increasing domestic demand. Indian domestic coal demand is around 35 percent higher than domestic supply, resulting into a high deficit of which a huge part is being met by costly imports from Indonesia, South Africa and Australia. The country had imported a record 171 MT coal last financial year to meet domestic requirements. Meanwhile, to boost the domestic coal production, the government has planned to invite bids from private players to start coal mining in a public-private partnership (PPP) mode in the country, which would also end the monopoly of public sector unit Coal India.

The CNX Nifty opened at 7,399.75; about 3 points lower as compared to its previous closing of 7,402.25, and has touched a high and a low of 7,414.95 and 7,360.50 respectively.

The index is currently trading at 7,372.85, down by 29.40 points or 0.40%. There were 22 stocks advancing against 28 declines on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were SSLT up by 3.42%, Power Grid up by 2.21%, Hindalco up by 2.15%, BPCL up by 1.55% and HUL up by 1.43%. On the flip side, ICICI Bank down by 1.89%, ONGC down by 1.64%, Tata Power down by 1.56%, NTPC down by 1.52% and HDFC Bank down by 1.46% were the major losers on the index.

Most of the Asian equity indices were trading in red; Shanghai Composite slipped 0.80 points or 0.04% to 2,024.04, Hang Seng dropped by 53.40 points or 0.23% to 23,098.31, Jakarta Composite declined 16.67 points or 0.34% to 4,915.89, Nikkei 225 tumbled by 39.37 points or 0.26% to 15,028.59, Straits Times declined 7.02 points or 0.21% to 3,273.15, Seoul Composite dipped 19.49 points or 0.97% to 1,989.07 and Taiwan Weighted was down by 6.17 points or 9,113.79.

On the flip side, KLSE Composite was up by 2.16 points or 0.12% to 1,867.36.